1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus and a control method therefor, and a program, and more particularly, to processing for switching a storage destination of data acquired by reading an image.
2. Description of the Related Art
From the needs of high efficiency and low cost of a method for managing a large number of paper documents, momentum toward computerizing paper documents in an office have rapidly been increased. A document management system storing scanned documents from an image forming apparatus such as a scanner or a digital multifunction peripheral to a document management server has been spread widely.
On the other hand, a service that has been so far provided in a corporate intranet can be transferred onto the Internet, and a client can use the service, as needed, and pay a fee for the used service.
In the document management server, there is a method for charging a fee for an amount of use of a storage area in the server, for example. More specifically, a fee to be charged a client increases as the amount of use increases, unlike a document management system that has been so far used in an intranet. In the above-mentioned system, when the amount of use is expected to exceed a threshold, charging of an additional fee can be avoided by suppressing storage of a scanned document in the document management server or storing the scanned document in another designated storage location.
As a conventional technique, a method for changing a storage destination of a scanned document according to its capacity has been known (Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-186823). In this technology, an image forming apparatus that has made a scan basically stores document data in its own built-in storage device. When it is determined that anymore document data cannot be stored in the built-in storage device, the document data is stored in a computer on a network.
In a conventional technique, a data storage destination is not managed in consideration of realization of a system in which a fee is charged for an amount of use of a storage area in a document management server. In Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. 2004-186823, for example, the scanned document is only temporarily retracted due to exhaustion of the capacity. A situation where a fee is charged for an amount of use of the storage area in the document management server is not assumed, and later use of the scanned document is not considered. More specifically, work for manually collecting scanned documents that have been temporarily stored in a distributed manner is required.